


In Hours Uncounted

by remiges



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Rough Sex, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trope Subversion/Inversion, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 04:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13333866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remiges/pseuds/remiges
Summary: Claude's grandparents take him to get his first name when he's ten—younger than most people start, but older than his grandparents when they'd had theirs done. His grandmother's skin is threaded red and gold with names, and Claude wants that, wants that sort of history for his own.





	In Hours Uncounted

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [this lovely poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55727/like-the-small-hole-by-the-path-side-something-lives-in) by Jane Hirschfield, which fits rather nicely with the story.

_The most common portrayal of foretellers is that of the Fates, running fingers down a piece of string to get some sense of what's to come. "Each telling follows a thread in the tapestry of a life, where each thread represents one future out of a million different possibilities." That's the metaphor that most often gets used, but it oversimplifies the matter. A thread in a tapestry? No. Foretelling is more like trying to describe what a tapestry is going to look like while the wool is still on the spinning wheel, or while the sheep are still grazing the field._

_—Analea Kekaulike, renowned foreteller of the nineteenth century_

 

Claude's grandparents take him to get his first name when he's ten—younger than most people start, but older than his grandparents when they'd had theirs done. His grandmother's skin is threaded red and gold with names, and Claude wants that, wants that sort of history for his own.

Her foreteller, Mr. Mizuki, lives in an assisted living facility on the edge of town. He lets them in with a wink towards Claude and a nod to his grandparents, and unhooks the smoke detector by standing on the kitchen table while Claude's grandmother holds the whole thing steady and his grandfather holds onto Mr. Mizuki.

Even though he's old and lined and shrunk into himself, Mr. Mizuki's hands are steady and deft, first on smoke detector and then on the tattoo stick and the pots of ink he brings out. After everything's been wiped down with antiseptic, he lights incense, something that smells like… the forest, maybe. It's thick and heady, and Claude sits at the table while his grandparents talk out of sight in the living room, the hush of their voices a comforting familiarly.

One minute Mr. Mizuki is there in the cramped kitchen, and the next he closes his eyes and goes somewhere, Claude doesn't know how to describe it. His body is still there, but when he blinks his eyes open again Claude's sure he can't be seeing the room or the refrigerator crammed with pictures, or even Claude himself. He almost wants to wave a hand in front of his face, but he doesn't, just holds still like he might break the spell if he moves.

He doesn't know how long they sit like that, but then Mr. Mizuki is picking up the tattoo stick and dipping it in the ink, seeming to know where everything is without looking down. And then he's reaching for Claude's arm, and Claude squeezes his eyes closed because you aren't supposed to look at this part, and it—

It hurts. It hurts more than he'd thought it would.

When it's all done and Mr. Mizuki has taped a square of gauze over the name, he hands Claude a butterscotch candy from a glass jar sitting on a side table and ruffles his hair. That's what will stick with Claude, years afterward: not the pain, but the too-sweet taste of the candy and the checkered pattern on Mr. Mizuki's socks when he stands on the table to put the smoke detector to rights.

Mr. Mizuki smiles and shakes everyone's hands, and then Claude's back outside, walking through late-January slush. "Does he ever talk?" he asks when they're all in the car. He wants to push on his name, the urge like wanting to worry a bug bite, but he doesn't. He knows how this works.

"No," his grandfather answers. "At least, not during the foretelling. He's one of the ones who still follows the old ways." He sounds admiring, and Claude nods, watches the world spin by as they wind closer and closer to home.

***

He's supposed to leave the bandage on, wait until it heals to look, but that night Claude peels the edge of the tape off and sneaks a glance by the light coming from the hallway.

 _William Carey_ the name reads. He can't tell what color it is, but it's something dark, like a blue or a green. The L's swoop dramatically, and the tail of the Y curls over itself in an intricate spiral. It looks delicate, but Claude kind of likes it. It fits, he decides.

William, he thinks after he's pressed the tape back down and crept back to bed. William Carey. Will.

He wonders if he'll ever meet them. 

 

_Foretellers use scarification, tattooing, and non-permanent methods of revealing the names imparted to them. The tradition spans cultures and generations, from the San (or Saan) people in Southern Africa to the Inuit people in North America, the ancient to the modern. Whether foretelling itself is a matter of genetics, training, or psychedelics, there is no denying that the work is one of craft and artistry._

_—Marks Through Time: A Pictorial History of Foretelling Marks. Victoria Steffens. Penguin Random House, 2003. Pg. xii._

 

Claude goes to the foreteller twice a year, usually with his grandmother, but then by himself after she dies and his grandfather starts getting confused a lot. His parents understand, but they aren't as devout anymore and Claude doesn't want to ask them to come. Juniors makes it harder, so he cuts it down to once a year, uses the summer and bares his arms—and later his shoulder blades—to the bite of the needle. He comes to like the pain, the way it grounds him in his body while taking him someplace else in his head—still there, just further away.

Nobody really knows for certain how foretelling works besides the foretellers, and they aren't talking, but Claude's heard it's like… voices calling out from the void. Or, dancing shadows. Sometimes it's a snatch of conversation or the press of phantom fingers guiding their hand, a name burning sunspot-bright behind their eyes. It's supposedly different for everyone, but once the name comes they mark it down in ink or blood regardless of what they've seen or what they know, if they know anything at all.

The future ex-husband who'll break your collarbone. The woman who's going to help you get into college. The man who will pull you out of traffic. The name you have picked out for your daughter before you start hemorrhaging in the cereal aisle. The person who killed you in a world just out of step with this one. The love of your life in a world where you didn't miss your train.

The maybe. The possibly.

Claude thinks about it sometimes, traces the names inked in brilliant blues and purples across his skin. The traditional Japanese method of tattooing has given way to regular tattoo guns as he's gotten older. Mr. Mizuki had died the same day as his grandmother, and Claude knows it's just a coincidence but he can't help but entertain the notion that there was something tying them together. Maybe that was the reason for her name on his skin. Either way, Claude takes a bottle of Wild Turkey to pour over their graves and whatever Japanese food he can find in the store to eat on the grass at the cemetery if he's back home when the anniversary of their deaths rolls around.

The foreteller he uses now is in her early thirties and albino, and she'd laughed when Claude had asked once if that had anything to do with her being a foreteller. She hadn't answered his question, though.

And the names snaking across Claude's skin grow and grow.

They aren't all the delicate font of William Carey's mark. Instead, they stretch bold and chicken-scratched, cursive and print, ornate and plain and just plain gaudy. Really, the only thing they have in common is that the future twists around them, or at least has the potential to do so.

Shelly Gandieu. David Jones. Sidney Crosby. L'nordique Mateu. Stacy Johnston. Danny Briere. Sidney Crosby. Ryanne Giroux. Meredith Chen. Lucy Sanders. Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby.

Sidney Crosby. 

 

_It seems that nobody can get enough—from grade-B Hollywood movies to pulp romances, everyone has something to say about foretelling. It's all love and destiny, people preaching about fate to starry-eyed children and adults who want some respite from their boring lives. Pop culture has claimed foretelling—a religion with a hundred different subsets and a multiplicity of practicers, complicated and complex—and boiled it down to so much romantic mush._

_—"Foretellers are the New Amish." Letters to the Editor, NYT Online. March 12, 2011._

 

It's the series against the Pens and they're up 3-0 and Claude got a _hat trick_ in the game before, and none of that explains why Claude's in Sidney fucking Crosby's room looking to get fucked.

"How are you always this mouthy," Crosby says, looking him over like Claude isn't worth his time of day. He's visibly hard though, so Claude thinks he's probably winning this one.

"If you don't like it—" Claude says, stepping closer and running a hand over the bulge in Crosby's pants, "—then shut me up." He sets his teeth to Crosby's earlobe and bites, and then Crosby's got a hand in his hair, pulling Claude's head back to expose his neck. Claude's eyelids flutter closed without any input from him.

"Come on, is that all you've got?" he asks, not quite breathless. He tips his forward to increase the pull on his hair and opens his eyes to glare.

Crosby bares his teeth, and the dislike in his gaze shouldn't turn Claude on like this, but it does. He likes when Crosby is riled up on the ice, when he can get under his skin. It's not a surprise that it does something for him off the ice, too.

Crosby fucks him with not enough lube, Claude's pants pooled around his ankles and his forehead pressed against the wall. Claude's making enough noise that Crosby puts a hand over his mouth at one point, but Claude bites him hard enough that he takes it back. If Crosby doesn't want anyone to know he's fucking a guy, he shouldn't have texted Claude his room number.

It's too soon before Crosby's thrusting erratically into him and coming, fingers so tight around Claude's hips that he's sure to have bruises tomorrow. Claude reaches down to start jerking off, but Crosby slaps his hand away.

"Hey, don't—" Claude starts, and then Crosby turns him around and folds down to the floor.

Claude's knees almost give out.

The sight of the great Sidney Crosby with Claude's cock in his mouth, dark hair bobbing, is one that Claude is going to be jerking off too for the next century. Claude's close already, and Crosby digs his fingernails into Claude's thighs when he's blowing him, and it doesn't take long before he's there. He feels viciously pleased when Crosby chokes on his come.

"Well, this was fun," Claude says as he does up his pants, leaning against the wall to disguise how shaky his legs are while Crosby spits in the trash can. "Want to do it again after we knock you out? A consolation prize, if you will." He says the second part in French, but judging by the look Crosby is giving him, he got the gist.

"Keep telling yourself that," Crosby says. The dislike is still there, and the fire, too. Good, Claude thinks. It'd be no fun to beat Crosby if he was missing his spark.

Driving home, Claude thinks he can feel Crosby's come leaking out of him. God, they hadn't even used condoms, not like the last time—the first time—they'd done this. If Crosby just gave him an STD Claude's going to kill him, but it had felt so good at the time that he can't bring himself to care.

***

The fifth time Crosby slashes his wrists in the faceoff circle, Claude starts to think that letting him in on how much Claude likes pain was a bad idea. That, or Claude's sleeves had ridden up while they were fucking and Crosby hadn't liked what he'd found. 

 

_"We just knew." LeAnn Berkshire, née Horowitz, says in the television interview that went viral in March. "I had her name, and she had mine, and we just knew."_

_'Sophia Berkshire' sits on LeAnn's arm in bold red—think the color of lipstick you would wear to a cocktail party—tucked in between Sandra Bullock and Elias Dominguez. Asked, if she isn't worried that one of her other names might have more influence, LeAnn shakes her head._

_"No, there was just this spark. I don't know what other futures those names correspond with, but this is the one I'm living in now." She smiles over at her wife, who smiles back._

_Sometimes when Fate steps in, you just have to listen._

_—"22 of the Most Romantic Foretellings of 2008." BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed Media. December 29, 2008._

 

The lines from surgery ride just above the first name he'd ever gotten, slicing off the flourishes on the L's in William. By the time Worlds rolls around the scars are nothing more than thin white lines crossing his skin, but Claude still holds that grudge.

He's in the locker room getting ready for their first practice as Team Canada when Coots sees him and does a doubletake, probably because Claude isn't wearing covers. He usually doesn't, but that's around his team, people who have his back. Still, Claude doesn't see why he should have to cover up here. It's not his problem if someone else's name is on his skin, and it's not like other people in the room don't also have names, though most of them don't have as many as he does. He's not ashamed of being named, so he's not going to hide.

That, and the airport had lost his luggage so he doesn't have his covers.

He catches Crosby staring at his own name when Claude's changing—the cursive one looping over his left shoulder blade—but when he raises an eyebrow, Crosby turns away looking flustered. Claude snorts. It's not like it's a secret he's got Crosby's name. He's pretty sure a number of people do. It's just the _principle_ of the thing.

"Is he going to be a problem," Coots asks from beside him, low enough that only Claude can hear. He's focused on lacing up his skates, so Claude waits until he looks up to shake his head. Coots looks dubious, but he doesn't push it.

***

They play good hockey together. Infuriatingly good hockey, actually. They win _gold_ for _Canada_ together. _Gold_.

When Crosby sits down next to Claude's stall, champagne-damp and flushed pink from alcohol and victory, Claude remembers that look. For all that they haven't hooked up since the 2012 series, he's not stupid. He knows what Crosby's after, and he can't say he doesn't want the same thing.

And then Crosby says, "Sidney Crosby, huh?" while gesturing at Claude like an asshole, and Claude sighs. He should have expected this, but he'd thought he was free this far into the competition. They've already won, for god's sake.

"It's not like I chose this," Claude says, resisting the urge to pull his sleeves down further, like that could retroactively take back Crosby knowing what's written on his skin. "The foretellers think you're important." He tries to ignore the way he can feel his ears heating up. "Not to me, just to the universe. Don't make it weird."

"Huh." Crosby doesn't look like he's going to say anything more, but he eyes Claude's shirt like he'll be able to see right through it if he stares hard enough.

"Look, are we fucking or not?" Claude asks, scowling. A stall over, Coots suddenly has a coughing fit, but that's okay. Claude knows he won't make it into anything, and everyone else is too far away or too wrapped up in celebrating to have heard.

"You want to wear your medal?" Crosby asks, a speculative look in his eyes.

Claude snorts. "What do you think?"

***

They end up breaking the bed. It might be the best sex Claude's ever had. 

 

 _O Romeo, Romeo,_  
_wherefore art thou Romeo? (2.1.74-75)_

_"Wherefore" in this case does not mean "where" but "why." Juliet is asking why Romeo is a Montague and the son of her family's greatest enemy, not where he is geographically. Unaware that Romeo is below her balcony, she addresses her monologue to his name on her wrist as a stand-in for Romeo himself. (Note: some high-class individuals in Shakespeare's time would receive only one name their entire lives, believing this name to be the most important. For a further discussion of how Shakespeare uses and subverts this practice of one-name marks in Romeo and Juliet, see Chapter 12.)_

_—Shakespeare Made Easy: Romeo and Juliet. Abraham Weissman. Harcourt Inc, 1985. Pg. 119._

 

It becomes a thing.

They hook up when they're playing each other, but it's not like it's anything more than electricity and stress relief and getting off, and the sex is… it's good. It's really fucking good.

And then Claude almost gets outed in November—some guy who couldn't even keep his hands to himself when Claude was blowing him. Claude's lawyers deal with it, but he guesses he knows why William Carey ended up on his skin, now. Wonders if this means he got outed in a different twist of fate.

It's not like anything irreparable comes out of it, but it makes Claude wary in a way he hadn't been before. He stops picking up guys, though it's not like he'd been able to do that much anyway, what with being more recognizable. He mostly sticks to Crosby and a few other regular hookups, semi-dates a girl for a month before they both agree it isn't working, and then somehow it's just Crosby. Or, Sid now, he guesses.

If there's anyone else who values his privacy as much, Claude has yet to meet them, and it's not like he's settling. The sex is fantastic, and Sid knows how to hurt him just right, and he gets so pink when Claude is fucking him, and he makes these little noises, and—

Anyway, it becomes a thing. 

 

_It seems like every time you turn on the TV there's more sugar-coated misinformation from individuals obsessed with romanticizing the named. In their revisionist world, a black man's name appearing on a white woman's skin never used to be a death sentence, to say nothing of the consequences of names appearing on slaves. History is full of these atrocities, and we haven't changed that much as a society, regardless of how many romantic comedies Hollywood churns out._

_(Related: In Secrecy, In Shadows: The Impact of Slavery and the Tradition of Non-Permanent Marks) _

_Rapists and pedophiles justify their actions based on having their names on victims' skins. Parents squabble about who has their children's names in divorce court when trying to claim custody. Abusers fight restraining orders based on the idea that they could never hurt their named. Cults rise and fall to the idea of a single, perfect future._

_Really the only thing left to say is, to quote Tina Turner: What's love got to do with it?_

_—"The Fates Made Me Do It: Foretelling and the American Justice System." Daniel Schuester. Blog the World, Blog the World Inc. July 2006._

 

"Don't push on it, you'll fuck it up," Claude tells Sid as he pulls his shirt off and drops it to the floor. His latest name sits tucked between _Irma Hewett_ and _Nolan Patrick_ on his left arm, a new mark surrounded by old ones. It's still covered, but Claude knows what it says.

"I know how to care for tattoos, I'll be careful," Sid says, but he looks interested. "Is it another one of mine?"

"It's rude to ask," Claude tells him, but he knows Sid will take that as a confirmation. He's not wrong, is the thing, but Claude doesn't want to talk about it.

"Sure," Sid says, and then Claude's unbuckling his pants.

They usually go a little rough, and this time is no different. Claude fingers himself open and gets on his hands and knees, and it's not long before Sid's fucking him. Claude will never tell him, but he loves Sid's mattress, and Sid's dick isn't half bad, either.

Still, Claude can't quite get out of his head like he normally does.

Sid's got one hand on a hip and the other curled around Claude's right arm, and when he tightens his grip his thumb presses into one of Claude's names, one of the _Sidney Crosby_ 's. Usually Claude would be into that, but not tonight. He can't turn his brain off, can't stop thinking about whether Sid thinks he's owed something because of Claude's marks. The way Sid's mouthing at the part of his shoulder blade that Claude knows bears the green cursive of his name makes something ugly curl in his stomach.

Claude can deal with possessiveness, finds it hot even, but there's something different about it when the guy's name is on his skin. Like claiming ownership, a tiny part of his whispers. Claude does his best to shove it down.

He switches positions so he's on his back and Sid doesn't have access to his shoulder anymore, but Sid just shifts his focus to the names on his arms. When he sets his teeth to one of Claude's earliest _Sidney Crosby_ marks and bites, Claude's had enough.

"Stop," Claude says. "Stop, stop," but Sid's already off him, leaving Claude empty and wincing.

"Are you—"

"Don't," Claude snaps when Sid reaches out, and Sid pulls his hand back like he's been burned.

Claude's having trouble catching his breath now, and that doesn't make any sense because nothing is _happening_. Sid's not touching his names, and he stopped when Claude said so, and Claude's just _sitting here_ , and—

"Slow down, deep breaths," Sid says, and Claude rests his head against his knees, breathes into the small space his body has created while Sid counts for him. He doesn't know how long he sits like that, just that the sweat has cooled on his body and he's starting to shiver by the time he feels centered again.

"Fuck," he says, and Sid stops counting. Claude brings his fist down on the bedding, the impact unsatisfying and muted. "Fuck," he says again. There's not much else to say. He'd been looking forward to this, however stupid that is. He can't tell if he's more upset at himself for freaking out, or at Sid for being unable to keep his fucking hands off Claude's names.

"Do you want—"

"I'm taking a shower," Claude interrupts, still avoiding Sid's eyes. God, he probably thinks Claude is a lunatic. He gets off the bed on legs that only shake a little, and Sid doesn't try to stop him.

In the bathroom he remembers his latest mark and the fact that he can't take the scalding hot shower he wants. He closes the lid of the toilet, puts down a towel, and sits there for a minute, just trying to figure out what to do.

There's a knock. "Do you need a bag or something?" Sid asks through the door. "For your name?"

"No, it's fine," Claude says. "It's not a cast." He doesn't know if he actually wants a shower now. Maybe just to splash some water on his face and pull himself together. "Thanks," he adds belatedly.

"I left your clothes outside the door, okay?" Sid says, and Claude closes his eyes, nods around the lump in his throat even though Sid can't see him.

By the time he comes out, Sid has put the bedroom back in order. He's perched on the edge of the bed like he doesn't know if he belongs there, which is stupid because it's Sid's room and Sid's house.

Before Claude can figure out how to break the silence, Sid does it for him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Whatever I did, I didn't mean to freak you out. Do you want to talk about it?" There's nothing else Claude would rather do less, but he also doesn't want to be in this same position the next time Sid gets grabby.

"Look, just… just keep your hands off my names, okay? Your names. I don't like it." Sid probably figured that part out from how Claude had bolted for the bathroom like a scalded cat, but he doesn't say so.

"Don't make this a big deal," Claude warns, sitting next to him when Sid doesn't respond. "It's not a fucking big deal."

"Alright," Sid says, putting up his hands. "Alright, it's not a big deal. I'm still sorry, though." And he does look sorry, almost guilty, with none of the pushback Claude had been expecting. "I wasn't thinking. It won't happen again."

"Whatever, it's fine," Claude says, suddenly exhausted. He wishes he'd gotten that hot shower now, or that he could be back in his own bed. What he really wants is to lie his head in someone's lap and have them pet his hair, just for a while, but he can't do that with Sid. They aren't like that.

It's quiet in the room and Sid looks like he's working himself up to saying something, but Claude doesn't want to hear it right now. "Shove over," he says, because he's not fragile and he won't have Sid thinking he is. He tucks himself right into Sid's space and grabs the remote off the nightstand. There's nothing good on, so Claude stops on the weather channel, the one that plays classical music in the background.

"Is this okay?" Sid asks after a minute, carding his fingers lightly through Claude's hair. Claude's chest feels uncomfortable, like something is squeezing it.

"Shut up, don't make it weird," he says as the weatherman points out pop-up thunderstorms. Sid shifts them so that they're lying down, and then the hand in Claude's hair is back, moving easy and rhythmic.

Claude's head is probably the safest place Sid thinks he can touch, since Claude would guess he doesn't want to put his hands on Claude's arms or back again. Claude's not going to dissuade him of that notion right now. He can explain the difference between bare skin and over clothes, touching a name and _touching_ a name some other time. For now, he'll just close his eyes and let Sid carry on. 

 

_Pastels are in! Pick up this chic mint-green cover to accessorize with this summer ($34), or keep cool with the latest wicking fabric ($42) in peach, orchid, or pearl ombré. If you're looking for something more versatile, try this reversible print ($40); sky blue on one side and black on the other, so you're covered whether you're at a garden party or classing it up at a LBD event!_

_—"Hot Summer Trends," Glamour. May 2015._

 

Claude's in an antique store in Calgary, just browsing, when he comes across a World War I helmet. It's tucked in the corner of a booth beside a box of postcards and a set of encyclopedias, and the metal is slightly dented and unremarkable. Claude can't figure out why he's starting at it, except it seems like something Sid would like in that dumb way he does.

Things have gone back to normal between them, or what Claude considers to be normal. They still hook up after games, but Sid keeps his hands off Claude's marks now. He mouths at the sides of Claude's neck instead of his shoulder blades where the delicate green of his own name sits, and twines their hands together if he's pining Claude down instead of grabbing him by his arms.

It's… weirdly sweet but also annoying. Claude's not going to break if Sid touches him wrong, and they aren't boyfriends, for god's sake. Still, he buys the helmet without thinking too hard about why.

It's surprisingly heavy, and he's already regretting this because they don't play the Pens again, and it's going to be a pain getting it back to Philly. He could take it with him if he gets up to Sid's place again this summer, but that involves airports again. Mailing it is an option, but he wants to see Sid's face when he opens it.

Maybe he should make Sid come to his house this summer. He'll probably tell Claude he already has a World War I helmet, but Claude has some anal beads he's been wanting to get up Sid's ass since forever. Yeah, he thinks, starting to smile. That'll probably work. 

 

_The general consensus is that foretellers see out further than the present when they read (meaning, if you're eighteen on your first reading, you won't get the name of someone who was important to you when you were six), but the question is how far. One would think this could be solved by looking at people who have recurring names. After all, people get married and change their surnames, or acquire different nicknames, or take on a new name and abandon a dead name. Statistically, scientists should be able to figure out the likely time span dilation foretellers create. But as with all things, foretelling is more complicated than that._

_—A Layperson's Guide to Futurology. Uwe Kazim. University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Pg. 29._

 

Claude gets a new name every year, but it's not because he's bound to the foretellers or the idea of knowing a possible marker for his future. It's more like… a connection. Not to the people inked on his skin, but to his grandfather's polka music and the ice clinking in his grandmother's glass of whisky. Their devotion. In memoranda.

Sid texts him a slightly blurry picture of a hummingbird, and then himself on his dock without a shirt on while Claude's waiting for the foreteller he uses in Philly to get off work. Sid's squinting slightly, and his nose is red like he's already gotten some sun, and he's wearing the Canadian flag swim trunks someone had gotten him as a joke, and it's so… so Sid. Just this side of ridiculous, but somehow hot despite that.

 _Ur going 2 burn_ , Claude texts back, ducking his head to hide his smile even though no one in the diner is paying him any attention.

 _It takes less time to type out 'to' than to type out '2'_ , Sid tells him, and Claude grins for real.

 _Nice apostrophes_ , he says, then slips his phone in his pocket.

Claude had spent a couple of weeks earlier that summer in Cole Harbor, fucking and getting fucked in Sid's terrible house. They hadn't managed every room—Sid had some weird hangups about doing it in the living room and the guest rooms, though he'd sucked Claude off in the kitchen one day—but they'd given it their best shot.

"Hey, there you are," Sam says, coming over to Claude's table. They pull off their nametag and drop it in their bag, and Claude sees they've picked up a couple of new piercings since the last time Claude had gone to them for a name. "You ready to go? I got a new place, but this one has an air conditioner that works, thank god. Like, you can follow me, but if you get lost, it's just a left at the light, and then—"

Sam keeps talking and Claude follows them out of the diner and into the late afternoon humidity. When the sun hits his face, Claude almost imagines he can taste butterscotch, and he thinks back to Mr. Mizuki's blue and green checkered socks with a smile.

***

When the burn of the letters comes out _Sid Crosby_ , Claude can't say he's surprised. 

 

_Everyone wants forewarning—just think about how many experiments the army has done with foretelling, none which have produced conclusive results. (At least, not that the general public has been let in on!) Looking specifically at mass namings, there is no way to know if a name that appears on a large number of people is indicative of a world crisis, a philanthropist, a serial killer, an organ donor. Names might be markers, but they're ones we see in the rearview and, only rarely, as signposts to guide our way._

_—But How Will I Die?: How Foretelling Can Help You Live a More Centered and Self-Aware Life. Bree St. Louis. Balboa Press, 1996. Pg. 5._

 

There's hockey and sex, and more hockey and more sex, and then someone it's summer again. The season feels like a lifetime condensed into months, but also like it could have been yesterday that Claude was here, fucking Sid in Claude's bed as the pleasure climbs his spine.

"That okay?" Claude asks, pushing Sid's leg further up and sinking deeper into him. It's almost time to get another name, so he figures they should get all the vigorous sex out of the way now.

"Yeah, there," Sid says, fingers flexing against Claude's waist. "Right there."

If Claude does this right, Sid stops talking, just gasps and moans while Claude fucks him. It's a heady sort of power, and Claude has never gotten over it. He hasn't managed to get him to go non-vocal this time, but it's still pretty good, and Sid comes with his fingers clutching Claude's shoulders.

Claude follows him shortly after, and they lie next to each other for a while until Claude checks the clock and groans. He's not going to have time to shower and still make it downtown to meet Simmer, but he can't bring himself to regret it.

"I've got to get going," he tells Sid, rolling off the bed and cleaning up as best he can. In the bathroom mirror his hair looks like someone's been tugging at it, so he combs it out and douses himself with body spray. That's the best it's going to get right now, he thinks, eyeing himself critically.

"Sure I can't convince you to stay," Sid says, stretching out on the bed as Claude pulls on clean clothes. He's got part of the sheet covering a foot, but besides that he's absolutely naked, the expanse of his shoulders just begging for Claude to sink his teeth in.

"I promised Simmer I'd help him with a thing," Claude says, not without regret. "And it's not like you don't have plans too. Have a safe flight home, Croz. Lock up behind yourself." He presses a kiss to the edge of Sid's mouth and slaps his ass, then grabs his keys and leaves with a smile.

***

Simmer makes a face at Claude when he meets him downtown, but Claude's doing him a favor so he shouldn't start.

Madame Maxine is a hack working out of a converted store, lots of flash and no qualifications. Claude can smell frauds a mile away, has to when he's looking for a new foreteller, and Maxine is a first-rate one. She's got a cute receptionist working the front desk, though, all big eyes and an even bigger afro. Simmer had needed an excuse to see her again, which leaves Claude ponying up the money to have his fortune read while Simmer gets her number.

Maxine works in a tiny room with a beaded curtain that Claude holds away from himself with distaste. She talks about riches and love and fame, then peers into a crystal ball for a while before setting it aside without saying anything. Claude resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"The ball is cloudy today," she tells him, putting on the glasses that had been dangling on her chest from a beaded chain. "Let me see your palm, we'll see what the fates have in store," and Claude thinks Simmer is really going to owe him for this.

Maxine takes his hand when Claude offers it, then stares at the inside of his arm for a long minute instead, long enough that Claude has to resist the urge to take his hand back. Most people aren't rude enough to stare at his names, but he guesses Maxine doesn't have that same sense of decorum.

When she whistles, it's long and low. "Honey, if you're looking for love I don't know what you came here for. Looks like the universe has got you pretty well set."

On second thought, Claude should have just let Simmer come by himself.

"That's not how names work," Claude says, for what feels like the millionth time in his life. He's pretty sure he could have this conversation in his sleep, but Maxine is already shaking her head.

"I know how it works," she says, rolling her eyes as she pulls up a sleeve. Her names cover the skin from her wrist to her elbow, and probably further up, scarred in tiny block letters. "You're practically covered in that guy's name. You know how rare that is? Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something. You ever met him?"

Claude stares at her, trying to formulate a response, but he's caught on her words. He looks back down at his arms. Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby.

Sid Crosby.

He's never counted them, not consciously. They just… were. Something you see so many times you don't even recognize anymore, that your eyes just pass over.

"You can't even do readings right," is what Claude finally ends up saying, because he doesn't have a comeback for her assertion that he's… that he's had something important staring him in the face and hadn't been able to see it. For _years_.

"No refunds," Maxine says, tapping a finger on a plaque and looking entertained for the first time. "I'll take that as a yes."

"I'm—" Claude says. They've always been casual, right? That's all they are, all they've ever been, except… Well. Maybe that's not exactly true, now that he's thinking about it.

He's probably doing something stupid with his face, but he honestly can't deal with this right now. "I have to—" He gestures vaguely at the doorway.

"Go get him," Maxine calls after him as Claude passes through the beaded curtain, still feeling slightly stunned. The beads feel slick and cool against his skin, like he's walking through a rainstorm turned solid, and he's so distracted he almost walks right past Simmer when he makes it outside. 

 

_Devotees will tell you that foretellers are always right, even if they're right in a universe slightly off-kilter to this one. The example that most often gets brought up is a case from the sixties, where a woman named Sandra Wellstone had never met or interacted with any of her names (of which she had over a hundred). Only later in life did she discover that there had been a mistake at the hospital and she had been switched at birth._

_People claim her story is an indication of the power of foretellers, but is it really? If the names were from a world where the two infants never got mixed up, was the foreteller stuck in that timeline, unable to read any other possibilities? Or out of all the possible futures, is there only a small chance that Sandra Wellstone gets switched, and the foreteller was reading the numerous strands where she grew up with her biological family?_

_—"The Curious Case of Sandra Wellstone," The Nation. September 6, 1982._

 

Claude doesn't go get him. Claude goes home. He goes home where his sheets still smell like Sid, and ignores Sid's texts for a week, and doesn't deal with anything. He's pretty sure he can't continue like that forever, but Sid's back in Cole Harbor and Claude's in Philly, and if he just stays there he can conceivably not have to see Sid until the season starts.

Which would be fine. Absolutely fine.

Claude's got other things to think about, anyway, like his annual name. Sam had moved to California and sent him a card with a recommendation for another foreteller in Philly, which was nice. So Claude goes, and the foreteller does her thing, and Claude gets another name, and goes home, and doesn't text Sid, and peels back the cover that night before he goes to sleep, and…. and stops.

The name is tucked right into the curve of his bicep, delicate and gold, and Claude doesn't know why seeing it is making him feel nauseous, like he took a step and missed a stair on the way down. He stares at it for what feels like an eternity, but no matter how long he looks, the letters don't change.

 _René Gardener_ , it reads. Unmistakable.

He doesn't know why he was expecting Sid's name, but he was. He'd been almost certain, is the thing. There's no way to know what the foretellers see or what paths they follow, and Claude's had other names show up besides Sid's in the last couple of years, but whenever he thinks about the future, he thinks about—

Jesus, fuck. He needs to get to Nova Scotia.

***

"Hi," Claude says when Sid opens the door.

"...hi," Sid says back after a pause. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I know, I wasn't expecting me either. Look, we need to talk."

Sid opens the door further, and Claude follows him in, drops his bag in the hallway and heads out for the dock without waiting for Sid. He's sure he'll follow.

Claude kicks off his sandals and sits down with his feet in the water, then starts talking.

"I went to see this fraud of a fortune teller because Simmer wanted to pick up this girl, and she said I'd been missing something that was right in front of my face," he says. "With you."

"Yeah?" Sid asks, sitting down carefully next to him. "She must be a decent fortune teller if she got all that while being a quack."

Claude laughs, but it feels pulled out of him and fades off quickly. He still can't look at Sid, can't believe how stupid he's been for all these years.

"I guess I just… wanted to know if we're on the same page," he says, avoiding Sid's eyes and looking out over the stretch of lake to the gentle swaying of the trees in the distance. "Because I think we left casual a ways back, I just didn't recognize it. And I'm sorry if I left you waiting around, or—"

"I wasn't waiting for you," Sid interrupts.

Claude shoots him a look.

"I wasn't!" Sid says. He looks the same as he ever does in the off-season—tanner, hair longer than it normally is, wearing one of those shirts of his that makes Claude want to take him to bed. "I was happy with what we had, and if you'd wanted something more I would have been happy with that, too. I figured you'd pull your head out of your ass and figure out what you wanted one of these days or you wouldn't." He runs a hand through Claude's hair as if to soften the blow, and Claude scoots closer to him.

"But that's still waiting, isn't it? All the time I was thinking we were—whatever, and you were—"

"Fine," Sid says, looking like he's making a concession just so Claude will stop. "I wasn't waiting but I was maybe… lingering. A bit. It's not like I minded, though."

And Claude thinks there's probably something Sid's not saying here, something to do with trying not to spook Claude if he pushed to hard, but he can let it go for now.

He works up a smile from somewhere and nudges Sid with an elbow. "A bit? I've been wandering around thinking we were casual for a truly stupid number of years, and you couldn't have just said something? I had to be clued in by some hack working out of an old CVS, Sid. She had so much incense I'll be smelling sage for a month."

"Well for someone who has my name on their skin so many times, I honestly don't know how you managed to miss this," Sid tells him, smiling back, and Claude feels his heart drop.

"That's not—"

"—how it works, I know," Sid finishes for him. "You can't know what ways people are important, there's no such thing as soulmates. I know, Claude," he says, gentler. "I was just kidding."

Claude lets out a breath and tips his head forward, rubs at his temples. "What a fucking mess. I should have… bought roses or something, I don't know."

"You're a romantic all of a sudden?" Sid asks, looking bemused, but Claude knows he is. He likes buying flowers and chocolates and… and planning outings and giving massages and buying presents—

Fuck.

Fuck, he's been so fucking stupid.

"What do you say to dinner?" he asks, because it's too late to go back and change the past, but he can do this.

"I've got some Chinese in the fridge," Sid says, gesturing. "And Oreos," and why does he have Oreos, when Claude knows for a fact that Sid hates them. If he's stocking them for Claude—

He tries to push the thought out of his mind, focuses on the task at hand.

"No, like—a place with cloth napkins and real silverware. Steak. Candlelight," he finishes, mouth dry.

"Candlelight, huh?" Sid says, a lopsided smile spreading across his face.

"Yeah, I figure if we're doing this, we're doing it right. So?" He tries to ignore the way his heart feels like it's caught in his throat. "What do you say?"

"Yeah," Sid says, reaching out. For a minute Claude thinks he's going to run his fingers across the letters of his own name inked on Claude's skin, but all Sid does is link their fingers together, never looking down. "Yeah, I think I'd like that." 

 

 _You_ _want a name? I can give you a name. Any tattoo artist can. You want the future? I can do that for you, too. It won't be for certain, but certainty is something for mathematicians with clean numbers and perfect ratios. Maybe the foretellers can see the future, but you can see the present, can't you? Foretellers, tattoo artists, people scrawling their lovers' names on thin skin in ballpoint pen—who's to say we won't all meet somewhere in the middle?_

_—Kai Slate, tattoo artist and proprietor of Tats! Tats! Tats!_

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [tumblr!](https://enter-remiges.tumblr.com/)


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